Air India venture secures ground handling contract from Maldivian

Air India plans to spin off its own ground-handling and engineering divisions into independent units. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint

Updated: Thu, Nov 15 2012. 06 44 PM IST

Mumbai:Maldivian, the national carrier of Maldives, has appointed AISATS to provide it ground handling services at the Thiruvananthapuram international airport in Kerala.

This is AISATS’s second ground-handling contract in recent weeks. Late last month, the equal venture between Air India Ltd and Singapore Airport Terminal Services, now known as SATS Ltd, secured a ground-handling contract from All Nippon Airways, Japan’s largest airline.

Maldivian will fly Airbus 320 aircraft twice daily between Maldives and Thiruvananthapuram beginning 15 November, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

As part of its India expansion plan, Maldivian has included Mumbai and Chennai on its routes, and increased passenger capacity from Thiruvananthapuram with the A320 narrow body aircraft. The transition from the 50-seater Bombardier Dash 8 Q300 aircraft to the 152-seat A320 will add more seats on the route to accommodate growing tourism demand, the company said.

AISATS has been present at Delhi airport since July 2010 and handles about 33,251 flights a year.

Air India plans to spin off its own ground-handling and engineering divisions into independent units.

“Air India’s ground-handling division will not compete at the airports where AISATS is present. The joint venture AISATS will continue at airports of Bangalore, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Mangalore and Delhi despite Air India operationalizing its ground-handling business as independent business unit,” an Air India executive said, requesting anonymity.

Air India will operationalize its ground-handling business as an independent unit later in November, he said.